The Death Of The Marketers Social Media Dream

Is social media the marketers dream?

I’ve seen so much garbage about social media marketing that I’m just about ready to explode, because the concept as taught by many is a farce.

A lot of material has been produced by people who really don’t have much of an idea about the topic.

This stuff gets picked up in turn, is rehashed and packed into “marketing courses”, and is constantly rehashed, and taught again.

Social networking is not new – it’s been around for as long as people have – it’s just that now it’s on the internet.

One of my favorite (off line) social networking haunts is the local Returned Services League, or RSL club.

The RSL has been a gathering place generations, and is a great place to go for dinner, entertainment or just to chat with friends.

I often wonder how the management there, or at any other establishment for matter, would feel if I rolled up and started selling stuff to their patrons.

I’d say that I would be shown the door pretty smartly.

One wonders then why so many marketers feel that they can do this on line, without following any protocols.

The mantra of ‘the money is in the list’ still rings loud in the ears of Internet marketers.

One common mistake is to add people on sites such as Facebook and Myspace and treat them the same as if they are on their list.

Why is it a mistake?

Because if someone signs up to an email list, they do so because they want or agree to.

They accept that the website owner or company will be sending them emails from time to time.

If you make a friend request to another person on a social networking site and they accept, they are agreeing to be your friend.

They haven’t agreed to accept your marketing materials.

The only way for them to opt out is to ‘unfriend’ you.

In fact, rather then just adding them to your list of contacts, they are really adding you to theirs.

Having people drop you as a friend because they regard you as a spammer is a huge waste of time and effort, and only damages your reputation!

Below are three links which give a great picture of where social media is at, and where it may be heading.

Claims about huge, and still growing numbers of followers on FriendFeed are tempered by the news that it defaults to already well known personalities as ‘interesting people’.

I wonder how these numbers would go if it was a totally random sampling by FriendFeed.

As the on line population becomes more net savvy, they appear to need the A list less as they find their own way around, and form their own groupings.

Many of these are gravitating to Plurk, which may well turn be one of the best social media sites yet!

Figures from Compete.com show an increase in traffic for that site of 4561% for May – June.

While gurus shout about their followers on Feedfriend and Twitter, the real news in social media is about engagement, and there’s plenty of it on Plurk.

I remember a book about church growth once by Dr Paul Yonngi Cho called ‘More Than Numbers’. In the book he talked about the number of people that could be catered for in a church, and that it wasn’t about the numbers at all.

The principle here is the same.

People will go where there is a level of acceptance and engagement.

I wonder if it will be the ‘perceived success’ of the A list that will lead to their eventual downfall?

The social media business is about people. Forget them and you have no social media, and no business!

Jim Kukral blogged recently about the death of the ‘A – List’.

Marshall Kirkpatrick talks about how FriendFeed defaults to ‘A Listers’..

Sonny Gill talks about the explosive growth that Plurk has experienced.

My apologies for this post being late!

After I upgraded WordPress today it went pear shaped and I’ve spent an age fixing it!